I sat down to write an intro to my poems collection stating “these are in chronological order. there’s 2 parts”.

and then this whole other thing happened. 


Introduction

“If you want to know god, enjoy the company of lovers”
Rumi

“They played our kitchen song
to my grandmother’s body in her bed.”

angelic voices drew us from slumber
to find the two women wrapped around a guitar

“Evening rise,
Spirit come…”

winter passed this morning
and so did she

i was rifling through pages of scribbled notes, preparing to host the last call of my online workshop. A sentence caught my eye.

“When hosting a workshop, always show up with a full cup”.

my cup felt full already - with fresh air from a long walk and dramatic endings, a morning chat in the woods where the penny dropped and i trimmed my sail, decided my temples needed another name.

anyway - that was daytime.
i prepare to tune myself further - flip out the yoga mat.

thank you carina for the moving time we shared during this on-the-fly photoshoot, a rainy Wednesday dodging pilgrims to the greenhouse...

for years i’ve been receiving visits of the peacock, saying constantly “be more visible”. it took some guts to dare to put on this dress for the shoot - it’s so stunning that i barely wear it. i can’t deal with how much i get stared at.

so carina dared me to put it on and here we go.

valentine day’s hangover
taught me something i did not know -
love can come.
love can go.

that day i wake and my heart is dense as a bucket of wet ash.

i busy my hands to not look at your face,
Stir some oils in a pan
to avoid you
in a flat three steps wide

you don’t get it
i stare at the candle
in the hovering sleep time

and where some contemplate the Beloved wrapped in its robes
of absolute -
silence, emptiness -
i trace my finger on the smiling wrinkles of God
in this so-human mystery,
the blotched-ink scribblings of our blueprints
that amazingly,
get us through the day
together

i’ve been feeling so warm and fuzzy around really special group gatherings i’ve been a part of lately. (and even organised a few myself - proud!)

one of my intentions for this moon cycle was to “walk small steps towards big dreams”.

yesterday that looked like a hardwood floor full of spicy women, camped down and buying potions and card games, mulled wine and cakes and talking about heartbreak and stroking backs and keeping an eye on the kids. archipelagoes of friendship drawn across the space with extended legs and fingers reaching out to wave helloes to the latest one to walk in.

i’ve just started receiving critics for my manuscript from men who are strangers. who are not part of the “sacred sexuality community”, for lack of a better term.

i’m really touched by the longing I hear under their words, specifically when I describe what it feels like, to receive semen inside of me. To conceive. To feel the immediate shifts as the womb and the whole body rearrange themselves to create a child.

as i flesh out more details into the book i find myself caught in the question of how to introduce all these people i love, whose names i’d slipped in with no further description.

i did not expect it to be so existential.

but it became quickly clear, why i’d avoided doing this.

how on earth do you describe someone you love?

it was like watching a crack in the earth open, all day
it started on the phone,
“how are you”,
“mourning twelve friends massacred and more to come, more to come,
in and out of life as usual and the dropped-pit stomach of despair”

and the other glued to the news like a man on heroin,
can’t stay away from the siren call of poison
he’ll say he has sudden visions of dead bodies when we make love and so will i,
fresh out of a dream of mindless killing from the not-soldiers,
where ecstasy peels back the edges of my being and wider things flood into my consciousness
like a hiccuping tv set